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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23152450">late nights and gay rights</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/yikes_strikes_again/pseuds/yikes_strikes_again'>yikes_strikes_again</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Carrying, Gay Rights, Gen, M/M, Season/Series 01, Skin Hunger, Sleep Deprivation, Touch-Starved, jon is sleapy, love how that's a wrangled tag, martin strong..., so ironic that i'm writing fanfic but i can't even read any bc i'm only on season one, that charlie-brown-halloween ass trope, this could technically be read as platonic but you know. you know it ain't, whats the name of the trope where someone carries someone to bed and covers them with a blankie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 11:08:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,855</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23152450</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/yikes_strikes_again/pseuds/yikes_strikes_again</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon just can't seem to stay awake. Martin's always there to help out.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Martin Blackwood &amp; Jonathan Sims, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>271</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>late nights and gay rights</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>i may have cried writing this because i would like to be held as well</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Jon was working late again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was far from the first time - in fact, in recent weeks he’d been spending more evenings in the Archive than ever before. Knowing that Prentiss was out there, roaming the streets of London, made the Institute feel like a place of relative safety. Whether Jon admitted to it or not, gathering the strength to leave work each day was becoming… difficult.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The downside of this, of course, was that he was sacrificing much-needed rest by staying after-hours so frequently. The lack of sleep was beginning to weigh on him even more than the stress, which, all things considered, was saying something.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon glanced up from the sea of papers on his desk to a clock on the opposite wall. It appeared to be stopped, as it displayed the same time since he’d last checked it that afternoon. He scoffed. His phone had long died, so he couldn’t use it for the time, and there were no windows down here, either. Although, Jon did remember that when he’d been on the ground level hours ago, the sky through the blinds had been black.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sighed, and his posture sagged in the uncomfortable wooden chair. Jon was exhausted, to put it lightly. But, since that was nothing new, he returned to his work.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stared uncomprehendingly at the mass of documents piled around him, having momentarily forgotten what he was in the middle of doing. His eye caught the page lying on top of the closest stack. It was statement number… #0130111. Ah, of course - one of the statements that he had failed to record to his laptop. The tape recorder sat expectantly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This should be a simple task, thought Jon. He straightened and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. All he had to do was put in a new tape, turn on the recorder, and lose himself in the grisly ramblings of some lunatic with a pen.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon took the statement in one hand, and pressed the ‘eject’ button on the tape recorder with the other. But as he removed the previous tape, he noticed something odd about its label - namely, that there was none. He paused. Had he forgotten to label it before he last began? Or had he put in a fresh tape just after completing the last recording? Jon quite honestly could not remember.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He set it down gingerly, perplexed, and rummaged around for another blank tape. He’d figure it out later, he decided. Jon was eager to get started. He knew that if he didn’t soon, he’d lose his momentum entirely and be claimed by fatigue.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His eyes tried to refocus on the paper in his hand, but the words blurred together. He blinked, removed his glasses, and wiped the lenses with the corner of his shirt. To his dismay, the action did nothing to make the handwriting any clearer. Jon leaned forward, straining his eyes, knowing he had to make an effort anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He absently pressed a button on the recorder and began to read. “Statement-” He cleared his throat. “Statement of… David Laylow, regarding…” He flipped through several pages, and skimmed over his own notes. “...his time working at an… industrial abattoir near Dalston. Original statement given September the first, 2016 - thirteen,” he corrected himself. “Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the… of the Magnus Institute, London. Statement begins.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon took a deep breath, hoping that the extra oxygen would rejuvenate him somehow. He felt a yawn in the back of his jaw, but refused to give in to it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As he read the statement aloud, lips forming the shapes of words, he became distantly aware that he was not losing himself in its contents as he usually did. His voice took on not the color of the story unfolding, but rather, the tone of his own exhaustion. Jon read each word as mechanically as the last, forgetting them as soon as they passed under his gaze, rendering their order meaningless.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was holding the statement directly under the light, but the glare of the lightbulb on the white paper made his eyes water. He had to squint. Leaning over cast a blessed shadow over half of the page, but darkness presented its own difficulties. Still, Jon found a more comfortable position in having both elbows propped up on the desk, unaware of how he appeared to be almost lying on it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He held his head valiantly upward, even as his left forearm formed an appealing cushion to rest it on. Jon ignored his own stumbling errors, grasping the current page with a hand that stretched away until the right arm lay flat on the desk.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After repeating the same sentence a third time over, Jon considered that he may have reached his limit. Unfortunately, even he was not immune to the borders of human physical capacity. There was, however, a simple solution that floated to the top of his consciousness - he would take a power nap. It was scientifically proven that short naps could boost alertness in subjects suffering from sleep deprivation, a group to which he no doubt belonged. Feeling proud of his ever-impeccable judgement, Jon let himself wilt where he sat, burying his nose into the crook of his arm and shielding his eyes with the paper he still clutched.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Twenty minutes, maximum, he thought, drifting. Just long enough to rest his eyes. Barely a wink. But when ten, twenty, thirty minutes passed without his heavy lids reopening, it became evident that his foolproof plan was doomed. This would have resulted in a tremendous waste of tape were it not for the fact that Jon had never pressed the record button in the first place.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At some point, the sound of a door opening called to him in the depths of sleep. Not loud enough to wake him, mind you, but loud enough to make him subconsciously aware of what was going on. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were footsteps, and a fond sigh. If hearing this, through however many levels of lethargy, motivated Jon to take any action, it didn’t matter because his body was far too heavy to move.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then, as naturally as if he’d been expecting it, one arm slipped under the crook of his knees, and another pressed against the small of his back. Jon felt the stress of gravity grow and then ebb away as he was lifted, slowly, carefully, and all the world save for this other body fell away. His weight shifted into the middle of him as he was made to lie back, arms curled into himself. A wavelike motion began, accompanied by more footsteps.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon felt the warmth and pressure of human touch encircle him. The left half of his body received the brunt of it, an unbroken line of contact snaking from his thigh up to his shoulder. Beyond it, the arm supporting his back enveloped his shoulders, pressing him deeper into a wall of warmth and softness. There was a smell like shampoo, old books, and something distinct yet unnamed. It calmed him almost as much as the feeling of touch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lights of varying source and intensity passed behind his eyelids as they walked. Under a particularly bright one, Jon hid from it by burying his face into the shoulder of this person, inert mind unconcerned with shame or boundaries. Slowly, a mysterious tension drained from his body as blood from a wound. At its release, he relaxed more entirely than he had in years.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon came into a room dimmer than all the others. That distinct smell was strong in here, impressing upon him even without his knowledge. Here, the person slowed their footsteps, and then, with great care and deliberateness, deposited Jon on a very soft, flat surface. The strongest emotion he could feel in this senseless state surged when, to his alarm, their contact receded, his limbs too feeble to protest it, and his left half was rendered cold and prickling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This feeling was diminished, though, when a warm and heavy something was drawn over him at once. It was not a suitable replacement for the touch, but, he supposed, falling from a doze into sleep, it would have to do. Jon slept dreamlessly in Martin’s bed, utterly dead to the world.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>He woke with a start from a nightmare involving thousands of silver, squirming things. Jon’s heart thundered, but the panic was quickly replaced with a different kind of fear. He realized, staring at the white ceiling, that he couldn’t remember how he came to be where he was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He jolted into a sitting position and scanned the room for anything familiar. To his utter relief, he recognized everything. The bed he found himself in was one he had slept in before, the bare shelf with nothing save a few articles of clutter, and in the chair on the other side of the room - Martin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was asleep, contorted into a position that couldn’t possibly be comfortable. Jon realized with a start that he must have carried him in here. The thought made his face feel warm, most likely with irritation, and he cursed Martin’s inability to leave well enough alone. Sleeping in here had cost him hours of time he could have used to work.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He kicked the blanket away and pulled himself to his feet, hands grasping at the back of his head to readjust his hair tie. Jon needed to get back to work, and… He paused, his hand reaching for the doorknob. Martin should probably get up, too. It might be morning, but if it wasn’t, he should at least take the bed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon stepped over to the chair, minding the fire extinguisher guarding its front legs. He placed a firm hand on Martin’s shoulder and prepared to shake him awake. But before he could do so, the electrifying feeling under his hand brought back a memory he didn’t know he had.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A hard plane cutting into his abdomen. Cramped and stiff. The door. Touch, a light head. Warmth, breathing, electricity, a sharp scent. Soft lights and rocking motion. Cold, a weight, and then nothing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was all quite vague. Still, the tingling in his hand reminded him of the same sensation that had, then, been all over. It came back, a flash of feeling, for only a second. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His body remembered how it felt to be held. Jon wished it would forget.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looked at Martin through a film of grogginess, through the vestiges of memory. He looked at the arms which had, apparently, been strong enough to carry him all the way here from his office. He looked at his sleeping face, as vulnerable as his had probably been when Martin found him. His skin began to prickle with sweat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon realized that he had been very still for the past few seconds. He blinked, gave Martin’s arm a quick shake, and pulled his hand away, struck by a shyness that kept him from touching him any more. The feeling remained.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Martin’s eyes fluttered open, Jon was already halfway out the door.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>please don't spoil anything past season 1 in the comments</p></blockquote></div></div>
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